Beyond preferences and rhetorics: What Africa’s 2025 integration moment really demanded and beyond!

By Rachel GYABAAH

In my melting down and reflective moment, l have always wondered if Africa’s Integration will remain a dream or reality of our time and what economic impact that will mean for the Continent’s international trade with the rest of the world. International trade first became a serious intellectual preoccupation for me during my Master’s studies. Like many students trained in political economy, I was drawn to the big question of how developing regions compete and survive in a global economy structured by asymmetries of power, interests, capital and access.

One of our group research projects focused on the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) 2000 and its impact on African trade. At the time, AGOA was often framed as a lifeline: preferential access to the United States market, conditional but valuable, especially for export-oriented economies.

Years later, that early academic curiosity has returned with renewed urgency but also with deeper unease. Late last year, there were headlines announcing the suspension of some African countries from AGOA and later, widespread speculation about its possible expiration, triggered intense and uncertain debate across the continent.

Major commentaries warned of looming export losses, job cuts and competitiveness gaps. What felt  frustrating was not only the anxiety itself, but what it really revealed: i.e. a continued dependence on external trade preferences at a moment when Africa is simultaneously championing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), arguably Africa’ss most ambitious integration project ever which has transformative potential for Africa.

Although AGOA has since been renewed, the episode exposed a deeper contradiction in Africa’s trade and development trajectory. Decades after independence and several renewed commitments to a myriad of regional integration initiatives, does the potential withdrawal of a unilateral external preference still feel existential and how does Africa intend to navigate this uncertainty? Precisely the lingering question the 2025 African Integration Report (AIR) recently released by the African Union sought to address. Thus, the related concerns and recommendation of the above report is so timely and extremely important.

The report does not merely celebrate integration as an aspiration; it interrogates integration as a structural necessity. It presents a sobering assessment of Africa’s integration journey, highlighting both progress and persistent fragmentation. Intra-African trade remains low compared to other regions, supply chains are shallow, and productive capacities unevenly distributed. More critically, the report underscores that integration is not just about tariffs and market access, but about infrastructure, industrial policy, productive transformation, and political coordination as well as human and systems centered design approach towards Africa’s sustainable development.

From the above report, it’s worth noting that Africa’s vulnerability to external shocks whether as a result of  changing trade regimes, geopolitical tensions or climate-related disruptions has a direct linkage to the Continent’s slow pace of economic integration. AGOA, in this sense, is not the problem; it is the symptom to a persistent systemic trade, investments and development integration in Africa.

The real issue is that Africa continues to export largely unprocessed commodities to external markets while importing value-added goods Furthermore, evidence abounds to the fact that, intra-trade on the African continent is far less compared to foreign exports.

The 2025 African Integration Report challenges African policymakers to rethink integration beyond declarations and mere rhetorics. It calls attention to non-tariff barriers that persist despite formal commitments, weak implementation of regional protocols, and limited alignment between national development plans and continental frameworks. AfCFTA, the report suggests, will not automatically transform African economies unless it is deliberately linked to industrialisation strategies, regional value chains, and inclusive financing mechanisms.

In addition, the report highlighted the political economic dimension to Africa’s integration with brutal and refreshing honesty. It argues that “Integration is not stalled by lack of vision, but rather by competing national interests, uneven power relations among states, and limited fiscal space. Smaller and less diversified economies fear being overwhelmed, while larger economies are cautious about opening sensitive sectors. Without mechanisms to address these asymmetries through compensation, coordination and shared investment, the promise of integration risks remaining rhetorical”.

To this end, AGOA’s debate becomes instructive rather than distracting. Preferential trade arrangements can offer short-term reliefs, but they do not substitute for structural transformation neitherdo they build resilience nor sustainable and innovative economies. As  evidently justified within the 2025 African Integration Report (AIR),“Africa’s long-term competitiveness will depend less on access to external markets on favourable terms, and more on its ability to trade with itself, add value to its resources and negotiate globally from a position of collective strength”.

Going forward, the choice before Africa is therefore not necessarily between AGOA and AfCFTA, but actually between dependency and strategy. Renewed external preferences should be leveraged as transitional tools and be not treated as anchors of economic planning. At the same time, continental integration must equally move from ambition to execution likewise from policy texts to value-based factories, logistics corridors, and harmonised regulatory systems.

Africa’s integrationmoment calls for strong political will and vision hinged on uncompromising courage to get things done and working for Africans. Integration efforts on the African Continent will also require African leaders aligning trade policy with industrial policy and most importantly continental commitments with national budgets. Above all Africa will have need of sustained value-based and ethical leadership to thrive per its integration and development agenda.

The 2025 African Integration Report does not pretend that this path is easy. But it makes one thing clear Africa’s future prosperity will not be secured by waiting for the next renewal of external preferences. It will be built by finally taking integration seriously, not as an idea, but as an economic project. Thus, it calls for honesty, political accountability and a human centered design approach to make Africa’s integration dream a reality. Africa cannot integrate rhetorically while remaining economically fragmented.

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